As an example to avoid following, surely Judas is the epitome? "Yet," Doherty notes, "before he appears to fill his treacherous role in Mark's Passion story, no ghost of Judas haunts the Christian landscape." When the author of Hebrews needed an archetype for someone "who forfeits the grace of God . . . bitter, noxious . . . immoral . . . worldly-minded," he picked Esau (Heb. 12:15-17). And how does Ted explain this? By defending Judas: "I see no indication in the gospel record of Judas as having been bitter or jealous. The sole motivation I see was for money."
Now, I happen to agree that Judas has gotten the ultimate bum rap of all time, but no skeptic's opinion of the man is relevant here. At issue is the opinions of first-century Christians, and it is ludicrous to suppose that their opinion would have been anything other than condemnatory in the extreme. According to all the conventional theories, the gospel authors included the story of his treachery because Christians everywhere had been remembering it from the very day it happened. But if that was the case, then why were the gospel authors the very first Christian writers even to mention it?
Ted tries to argue that for the author of Hebrews, Judas was beside the point:
First, the author cautions the Hebrews to not allow something to cause "the many (to) become defiled". . . . He is trying to protect the believers from losing their faith, as some level of apostacy may have been occuring (see 6:9-12, 4:14, 10:23). Did Judas cause the many chosen sons of God to lose their faith and as a result their chosen status? No.
Well, fine, but neither did Esau. Ted tries to argue the contrary:
In Esaus case, however, the effects were on ALL of his descendants, who had been the rightful heirs to Gods promise. THEY would have been the chosen nation had Esau not been worldly!
But was that the author's point? Here is the passage Doherty quoted, with some additional context:
Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled; that there be no immoral or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal. For you know that even afterwards, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears.
There is nothing there about any consequences to anyone but Esau himself.
Further along, Ted tries the readership angle.
The audience is believed to have been Jewish Christians who were in danger of abandoning their faith and lapsing back into Judaism. In every Chapter the author appeals to the authority of the Jewish scriptures (OT) to make his case for Christianity. He repeatedly appeals to the basics of the Jewish faith: He references lessons to be learned and applied to Christianity from Abraham, Moses, Aaron, Joshua, the Israelites in Canaan, and the priest Melchizedek mentioned by David. He spends several chapters discussing the old Jewish covenant of sacrifice compared with Christs sacrifice. The entire preceding chapter (11) discusses the faith of the fathers--Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and Rahab. He mentions others named in the scriptures--Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, and Samuel. Just after the mention of Esau he talks of the Israelis under Moses. Where do we see mention of anyone not named in scripture (other than Christ himself) or anyone within even the last 500 years prior from whom lessons could be learned?
I do not know among whom it "is believed" that the author was trying to keep recent converts from "lapsing back into Judaism." So far as I know—and so far as anyone can know from reading Paul's letters—during the period we're discussing a Jew who became a Christian did not stop being a Jew. A Jew who became a Christian just became a Christian Jew. The conflict between Paul and the Jerusalem church was over whether a gentile who became a Christian had to become a Jew also. Jerusalem said they did, Paul said they didn't. The author of Hebrews does not make it clear which side he took in that debate.
So, the only lapsing a Christian Jew could do was to stop being a Christian—presumably by ceasing to believe that Christ had died for his sins, or something of that sort. I see no indication in Hebrews that the author was arguing against any threatened backsliding of that sort, but let's suppose he was. Was there nothing about Jesus' pre-crucifixion life that was relevant to his defense of the faith? Jesus was not the only Jew ever to have suffered crucifixion. Why was any Jew supposed to believe that his death, and his alone, was the atonement for their sins? Paul and the author of Hebrews somehow got the idea by reading scripture—but what was it about Jesus of Nazareth that told them that that particular man was the fulfillment of scriptural prophecies?
We know how the gospel authors answered that question, but we don't know how Paul or the author of Hebrews would have answered it if anyone had asked—and there is no indication in their writings that anybody was asking.
Doherty suggests, in a single sentence, that the author of I Clement also had occasion to mention Judas when it would have suited his purpose, and Ted devotes around a dozen paragraphs to a counterargument. His case rests on a pile of assumptions about Clement's intentions that are nowhere spelled out in his letter to the Corinthians, and on convenient interpretations of the gospel stories that may or may not be justified and in any case we don't know to have been well known among Christians of the late first century. In short, Ted's counterargument simply assumes its conclusion.
This page last updated on August 4, 2010.